Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 passes its MOT

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I spent a few pleasant but troubled days with Car Mechanic Simulator 2018 [official site] just after launch, reporting that it was a great game saddled with significant technical and interface issues. Since that time, the developers have released approximately eight million and twelve patches (not to mention a feverish mea culpa for the game’s launch woes), so it’s time to take it back to the shop and see if it’s safe to drive by now.

I won’t do a full revisit, because the broad thrust of my feelings about the game – that, despite superficially ultra-technical subject matter, it’s a deeply relaxing and rewarding game for anyone, car enthusiast or no – remain unchanged. The issue at stake is whether you’re still risking losing hours of progress to a crash, with its lousy save system and inconsiderate UI still offering no protection against such things.

I can’t be unequivocal here – just because I haven’t encountered any showstopping issues in the most recent builds doesn’t mean no-one has, and the fact that the devs are still patching it even now suggests there’s still a few rusty bits under the hood. But! It does indeed now seem to be in the sort of state I’d have expected it to be in at launch.

For starters, the frame rate is now a mostly solid 60 even maxed-out, as opposed to ranging wildly all over the place no matter how low I set it, as was the case previously. More importantly, the damn thing hasn’t crashed on me once since I went back to it, although I should say that I’m yet to put the same number of hours into it that I did first and second time around. The feel is of a far more stable game, but I guess it’s stable until it isn’t.

Far more importantly, it’s added some major quality of life improvements in terms of savgames. It now has an autosave feature, which as far as I can tell triggers after a completed repair job, so you don’t stand to lose anything like so much time in the event of a crash. Clicking ‘New Game’ from the main menu (whether accidentally or on purpose) also no longer instantly eradicates any existing savegame, which corrects one of the more baffling interface oversights, although I’ll never get those nine hours back.

The interface as a whole is still more of a headache than it needs to be, with even the main menu a mess of small words and inconsistent controls, but it’s bearable even if it’s not as slick as a game this zen ideally needs. Maybe they’ll circle back round to a lick of new paint once they’ve got the engine purring impeccably.

It sounds like the devs might be out of the danger zone now, with their latest update noting that “Since game release day, 2 weeks ago, we were patching fixing and changing game constantly. There were 19 patches so far. We are working around the clock, 7 days a week to make this game work better and to make it bug free.” This does not sound at all healthy for the staff, with the update noting that some have not seen much of their families lately and so are now taking some holiday time. Sadness all round.

Planned for forthcoming patches are achievements, more parking garage options, further mod support and an extra test course. It’s worth reading through the full change log to date, to get a sense of quite how much they’ve fixed already.

Which brings us to the question of whether I should revise my former advice – that you should for the time being avoid buying what I do believe to be a great game. Yep, I reckon you’re safe to pull the trigger now. It needs more tinkering still, and will apparently receive it, but we’re out of the woods now for sure. The car physician has healed itself, and now is the time to go enjoy what is perhaps one of the most oddly absorbing PC games of the year.

11 Comments

I woulrd recommend playing My Summer Car instead. You get all the realistic car building mechanics you need while also having a whole world to explore.
It’s also an educative cultural experience! I’m sure Finnish Tourism Board would recommend it if they weren’t so humourless.

A word of warning – if you need an inverted mouse the game isn’t ready yet. They implemented mouse invert in one of the latest patches but badly botched it so the mouse is inverted in all the menus too.

Also the patches kinda dried up as of last friday – I’m guessing they’re taking holidays – so it might be a little while until it’s fixed.

I’ve sunk around 10 hours into it now and haven’t experienced a crash. It has a weird side effect of making me want to work on real cars. I’m visiting my parents and was about to take the brake calibur off until my father shouted at me.

In the pre-release videos a lot of hype and Nitro was dazzling our eyes and some of the things shown was Tuning and Performance. While the Tuning room remains in game it is currently blocked. I can understand if they felt rushed and were going to add it later but they stated they didn’t promise it but are grudgingly giving it to us. This unfortunately seems to be the case with all the —— things I listed. I’m the type if you advertised the usage of it that you should include it in game. You implied it in advertising. Don’t get me wrong the game is really good now and I think worth it. But 2015 had both tuning and performance parts that were a great aspect of the game. They needed expansion not removal. I’m not sure if they were thinking DLC with it or not as it was never stated just shown. To me they failed to get the all important information of “What does the customer want?”. CMS 2018 to me hyper concentrated on bling and left the under the hood details in the back seat.